Representatives from 184 countries recently gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, to tackle the growing plastic crisis. The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting (INC 5.2) went into overtime but failed to produce an agreement.

Two main issues were supposed to be resolved by this, the last scheduled round of negotiations: whether the treaty should include a cap on the production of new plastic and how to address concerns about chemicals in plastic.

More than 100 member states of the so-called High Ambition Coalition advocated for a binding treaty to cap plastic production and impose restrictions on dangerous chemicals used in plastic.

Another group of “like-minded countries,” composed of petrochemical-producing countries including Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia, instead pushed to simply manage plastic waste better, largely through recycling. At present, less than 10% of plastic is recycled globally.

The U.S., one of the largest plastic-producing countries in the world, reportedly sent letters to several countries urging them to reject a cap on plastic production and chemicals.

The U.N. meeting is consensus-based, “meaning that unless somebody rejects it, a potential decision would proceed. And all decisions for content did not proceed,” Björn Beeler, executive director and international coordinator with the International Pollutants Elimination Network, told Mongabay in a video call.

Following the collapse of the meeting, French environment minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher expressed anger, saying, “A handful of countries, guided by short-term financial interests rather than the health of their populations and the sustainability of their economies, blocked the adoption of an ambitious treaty against plastic pollution.”

Current estimates suggest plastic waste will triple in the coming decades, further polluting oceans, land, wildlife and our own bodies. The vast majority of plastic is made from fossil fuels, making plastic a significant contributor to climate change and its  production toxic for local communities.

Houston, Texas, is home to the largest petrochemical complex in the U.S. Children living near the facility have a  56% greater chance of being diagnosed with leukemia than children who live farther away.

Shiv Srivastava was born and raised in Houston; he’s the policy director for Fenceline Watch, an environmental justice organization based in Houston and recently lost his mother to lung disease.

“There’s a whole host of health impacts that are associated with it [plastic production]. For what? A ketchup packet that you didn’t ask for in your fast-food bag?  Nobody deserves to lose their life for this,” he told Mongabay in a video call from the U.N. meeting.

Undeterred, Beeler said the push toward a plastic treaty is a marathon, not a sprint. He expects representatives to meet again but with a different process that can achieve results. “Consensus is dead,” he said.

“This is a problem that’s not going away. You can try to bury your head in the sand, but it’s just not going away.”

Banner image: A woman collects plastic and other waste for recycling in South Africa. Image by Ihsaan Haffejee/UNEP via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — Officials say flash floods triggered by torrential rains have killed over 280 people in India and Pakistan and left scores of others missing. Rescuers on Friday had brought to safety some 1,600 people from two mountainous districts in the neighboring countries. Flooding began on Thursday in Indian-controlled Kashmir and spread to the north and northwest in neighboring Pakistan. Powerful cloudbursts triggered the flooding and subsequent landslides that injured dozens of people and forced the evacuation and rescue of thousands of others, particularly in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

By Channi Anand and Riaz Khan, Associated Press 

Banner image: Buildings damaged by Thursday’s flash floods are seen in Chositi village, Kishtwar district, Indian-controlled Kashmir, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Channi Anand)

An adult lioness has been photographed for the first time in six years in Bamingui-Bangoran National Park in the Central African Republic. The photo, taken in April by a camera trap installed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, shows a lactating female, possibly with cubs nearby, wandering the forest at night — the first evidence of a breeding female in this landscape.

“This is a truly exciting and hopeful sign for lions in the region,” Armand Luh Mfone, WCS’s director of programs for CAR, said in a press release. Camera traps so far have recorded only males, so this latest sighting “demonstrates that with strong protection efforts, this landscape still has the potential to support a thriving lion population.”

Bamingui-Bangoran National Park is part of the Northeastern Central African Republic (NCAR) Biosphere Reserve, a mosaic of protected areas that spans more than 113,000 square kilometers (about 44,000 square miles), a sixth of the country’s total area. NCAR also includes Manovo-Gounda St. Floris National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and other interconnected reserves that form vital wildlife corridors.

Historically, wildlife in the region, including northern lions (Panthera leo leo), have been threatened by hunting and illegal mining for gold and diamonds, as well as charcoal production. Armed conflicts have also fueled regional insecurity, threatening conservation. Lions, in particular, have been impacted by retaliatory killings by locals and a decline of their prey populations. Just a few dozen lions remain in NCAR today.

WCS has managed NCAR since 2019 as part of a 25-year partnership agreement signed with the CAR government. The NGO and its partners implement antipoaching patrols, park management, law enforcement and community development. They work with migrating herders to get them to go around national parks instead of passing through them, reducing human-lion conflicts.

The lioness sighting, WCS says, is the result of years of management that give wildlife a chance. A network of camera traps in NCAR has captured other carnivores — leopards (Panthera pardus), caracals (Caracal caracal), African wildcats (Felis lybica) and servals (Leptailurus serval) — returning after years of absence. Lions, too, may now have a chance to roar again at a time when their numbers are dwindling across Africa.

“Lions have suffered greatly due to decades of persecution,” said Luke Hunter, executive director of WCS’s big cats program, adding that low human densities in the NCAR landscape offer a chance for lions to recover. “If effectively protected, the two national parks alone could support 500 lions — a crucial boost to the roughly 750 Central African lions.”

Samantha Nicholson, carnivore scientist at the Endangered Wildlife Trust, called the sighting “significant” as breeding females are “the foundation for population recovery.” With sustained conservation efforts, she said, CAR could become a critical stronghold for northern lions. “Any sign of population recovery or potential increase gives cause to be optimistic for lions in central Africa.”

Banner image: Image of a lioness in Bamingui-Bangoran National Park, CAR. Image ©️ WCS.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Fire crews in Greece, Spain and Portugal raced to contain wildfires on Thursday, taking advantage of calmer winds that slowed the blazes even as much of southern Europe remained at high risk under hot, dry conditions.

A drop in wind speeds allowed firefighting aircraft in the three hard-hit countries to step up water drops, concentrating on existing fire zones rather than chasing fast-moving fronts. Authorities warned that extreme temperatures are likely to persist.

Spanish authorities reported the death of a 37-year-old volunteer firefighter who sustained severe burns in an area north of Madrid this week. It was the third reported death in Spain due to the recent fires. Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in the region and still can not return.

In Greece, the Fire Service said a major blaze outside the southern port city of Patras has been contained on the outskirts of urban areas after a large-scale deployment. Three people have been arrested in connection with the fire, which authorities said may have been deliberately set.

High winds in Greece shifted to different parts of the country on Thursday. Ioannis Kefalogiannis, the civil protection minister, said authorities were bracing for the likelihood of a new round of major fires.

“Under such conditions, even a single spark is enough to trigger an uncontrollable fire,” he told reporters. “This combination of weather and geographical factors leaves us no room for complacency.”

The European Union’s civil protection agency said it responded to requests for assistance this week from Greece, Spain, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania, sending firefighting planes and helicopters from other member states.

The agency said it had already activated assistance 16 times amid this summer’s wildfires as European countries have been hit by a “high number of catastrophic wildfires.”

The number of activations for 2025 already matches the total for wildfires during the entire 2024 fire season, it said.

In Albania, wildfires in central and southern parts of the country were contained after gutting more than 200 homes. Prime Minister Edi Rama promised that police would work “day and night” to apprehend suspected arsonists blamed by the government for causing some of the fires. Across the Mediterranean Sea, Morocco battled its largest wildfire of the year this week near Bab Taza, in the north of the country, which burned dense forest, fueled by strong winds and high temperatures. Authorities said water-dropping aircraft and more than 450 personnel successfully contained the blaze. A second wildfire near Tetouan, further north, was also brought under control.

By Derek Gatapoulos and Sumab Naishadam, Associated Press

Naishadham reported from Madrid. Associated Press writers Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania; Lorne Cook in Brussels; John Leicester in Paris and Akram Oubachir in Casablanca, Morocco, contributed to this report.

Banner image: A helicopter drops water on a wildfire in Larouco, northwestern Spain, Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Lalo R. Villar)

In May this year, wildlife inspectors for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service seized a shipment of 232 live stony corals at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The corals are now being kept at New York Aquarium for rehabilitation and propagation, in the hopes of helping raise awareness about corals, the Wildlife Conservation Society said in a statement.

“Corals are animals, and they’re vital to the health of our oceans,” Aaron Brett, coral expert at New York Aquarium, said in the statement. “Unfortunately, these corals confiscated by the USFWS spent five days in transit before arriving here, which is a major stressor. But remarkably, the majority of the shipment is recovering well.”

Christine M. Meister of USFWS’s Office of Public Affairs told Mongabay by email that the 232 seized corals were part of an air cargo shipment being imported from Indonesia by a U.S. company that deals in ornamental fish and coral.

Meister said the shipment included stony corals belonging to the genera Goniopora, Acropora, Lobophyllia, Alveopora, Euphyllia. Species of these brightly colored corals are protected under Appendix II of CITES, the global wildlife trade treaty. Appendix II allows regulated trade of listed species with correct export permits and documentation. 

Meister didn’t disclose the details of the actual violation but said the shipment violated the CITES provisions. “Live coral shipments must comply with the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Live Animals Regulations or the CITES guidelines for the non-air transport of live wild animals and plants,” she said.

The importing company chose to abandon the shipment rather than pursue legal action or forfeiture, Meister added.

All stony corals, which have hard calcium carbonate skeletons, are vulnerable to overexploitation. Goniopora, also called flowerpot coral, and Euphyllia, which include hammer corals, are popularly traded for the aquarium market, but some of their species survive poorly in captivity.

WCS, which manages New York Aquarium, said in its press release that around 30 corals arrived dead, but the rest are now being cared for by the aquarium’s coral propagation program. The plan is to move most rehabilitated corals to the aquarium’s public reef exhibits, WCS said.

To ensure the corals can adapt and propagate in the aquarium, aquarist Camilla Piechocki said in the release that they’re artificially recreating reef conditions by maintaining specific water chemistry and lighting. “These animals are resilient, but the transition from illegal shipment to thriving exhibit is a complex process,” she said.

Coral reefs, which provide habitat for 25% of all marine life and support a billion people, face numerous threats, including ocean acidification and climate change that’s causing more frequent coral bleaching.

“We hope that when people see how beautiful and diverse corals are, they’ll be inspired to help protect them,” Brett said.

Banner image of the confiscated corals now at New York Aquarium, courtesy of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

A recent study from the U.S.-based environmental nonprofit Waterkeeper Alliance has found “forever chemicals” contamination in 98% of the waterways it tested in the United States.

The findings come at a time when representatives from the world are gathered in Geneva, Switzerland, for the United Nations plastics treaty negotiations to hammer out a plan to address the growing plastic crisis. The issue of addressing the chemicals in plastic has emerged as a sticking point in the negotiations. One of the most widely used chemicals in single-use plastic is per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS. Also known as “forever chemicals,” PFAS can persist in the environment for hundreds to thousands of years.

The study sampled both upstream and downstream from 22 wastewater treatment plants in the U.S. The researchers also collected data from waterways upstream and downstream of 10 areas where biosolids — or sewage sludge that is being used as a fertilizer — were applied, Kelly Hunter Foster, a senior attorney with Watekeeper Alliance, said in a video call.

The study focused on low-income and minority environmental justice communities across 19 U.S. states. “Unfortunately Latino and other communities of color are disproportionately faced to bear the burden [of PFAS],” Vanessa Muñoz, waterways program manager with the Hispanic Access Foundation said in a press release.

The researchers found elevated PFAS levels in 95% of sites downstream from wastewater treatment plants, meaning the facilities aren’t effectively removing a class of chemicals linked to health concerns including developmental delays in children, fertility issues and certain cancers.

“The problem is that we have industries discharging PFAS into wastewater treatment plants, and wastewater treatment plants are not designed to treat PFAS,” Hunter Foster told Mongabay.

Elevated PFAS levels were also found downstream of 80% of biosolid application sites.

For all the wastewater treatment plants and at 90% of the biosolid sites, the total PFAS found exceeded the human health standards set by the U.S. nonprofit and advocacy organization Environmental Working Group.

Of the more than 15,000 individual chemicals within the class of PFAS chemicals, just a small fraction have been subject to toxicology studies. The Waterkeeper Alliance report comes on the heels of an announcement from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that it plans to extend compliance deadlines for some PFAS chemicals and stop enforcement of several others to reconsider how they were established.

“So that doesn’t really bode well for improving and strengthening the standards that we need to have done in order to protect the public,” Hunter Foster said.

Instead, she said we need to move toward stricter regulations for the entire class of PFAS chemicals.

“We really need the regulatory standards to fully address the types of PFAS, which are actually coming out of the plant, not just the two which are the most discussed.”

Banner image: of water sampling in a stream. Image by Iowa State University via Wikimedia. (CC BY-SA 3.0).